🌿 We're Hiring: Environmental Programs Manager
📍 Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
🕒 Employment Type: Full-Time
💼 Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior
🌐 Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are an organization committed to advancing environmental sustainability through strategic programs, environmental stewardship, resource efficiency, pollution prevention, ecosystem protection, regulatory compliance, and measurable environmental performance.
Our distributed teams collaborate across Environmental Programs, Sustainability, ESG, Environmental Management, Climate, Water Resources, Waste Management, Energy, Engineering, Operations, Procurement, HSE, Legal, Compliance, Government Relations, Research, Consultants, and Executive Leadership to develop and deliver practical environmental initiatives that reduce environmental impact and strengthen long-term resilience.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced and strategic Environmental Programs Manager to lead the development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of environmental programs and initiatives across the organization.
The ideal candidate will translate environmental priorities into measurable programs, manage cross-functional initiatives, ensure regulatory and environmental compliance, assess environmental risks and impacts, develop improvement strategies, and provide data-driven recommendations to senior leadership.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and implement environmental program strategies, frameworks, policies, standards, procedures, roadmaps, and annual action plans aligned with organizational objectives.
- Translate environmental and sustainability priorities into practical, measurable programs and initiatives.
- Develop and manage environmental programs covering pollution prevention, waste reduction, water conservation, resource efficiency, biodiversity, ecosystem protection, environmental compliance, and environmental risk management.
- Conduct environmental needs assessments, baseline studies, impact assessments, environmental reviews, and landscape analyses to identify priority areas for intervention.
- Establish program objectives, scopes, targets, milestones, budgets, deliverables, performance indicators, and implementation requirements.
- Manage environmental programs throughout their lifecycle, from planning and design through implementation, monitoring, evaluation, continuous improvement, and closeout.
- Coordinate cross-functional environmental initiatives involving Sustainability, ESG, Operations, Engineering, Facilities, Procurement, HSE, Legal, Compliance, Finance, Supply Chain, and other business functions.
- Develop integrated environmental management plans for facilities, operations, projects, and business units where applicable.
- Identify significant environmental aspects, impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities associated with organizational activities.
- Develop strategies to prevent, reduce, control, and mitigate environmental impacts.
- Establish environmental baselines, targets, KPIs, monitoring methodologies, reporting requirements, and improvement plans.
- Monitor environmental performance against approved objectives, regulatory requirements, internal standards, and environmental commitments.
- Develop environmental dashboards, scorecards, performance reports, executive briefings, and management recommendations.
- Establish and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) including waste generation, recycling, water consumption, emissions, energy use, pollution incidents, environmental compliance, resource efficiency, biodiversity indicators, remediation progress, and program outcomes.
- Collect, analyze, validate, and interpret environmental performance data from internal teams, facilities, projects, suppliers, contractors, consultants, and external sources.
- Identify environmental performance trends, gaps, anomalies, risks, and opportunities for improvement.
- Develop corrective-action and environmental-improvement plans based on monitoring results, audits, incidents, assessments, and stakeholder feedback.
- Coordinate environmental audits, inspections, monitoring programs, sampling activities, assessments, and independent reviews.
- Work with qualified environmental consultants, laboratories, technical specialists, auditors, and other external experts as required.
- Review environmental studies, technical reports, assessments, monitoring results, permits, and consultant deliverables for quality and completeness.
- Ensure environmental monitoring programs are appropriately designed, implemented, documented, and reported.
- Establish environmental data-quality, documentation, verification, and recordkeeping requirements.
- Develop and maintain environmental registers, compliance trackers, monitoring databases, risk registers, incident logs, action trackers, and program records.
- Identify and assess environmental risks including pollution, contamination, waste, water scarcity, water quality, biodiversity loss, habitat disturbance, resource depletion, climate-related impacts, and regulatory exposure.
- Develop environmental risk assessments, mitigation plans, contingency arrangements, and corrective actions.
- Integrate environmental risks into broader enterprise risk management, sustainability, ESG, climate-risk, HSE, and business-continuity frameworks.
- Coordinate environmental incident management, investigation, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and lessons learned.
- Support emergency response planning for environmental incidents including spills, releases, contamination events, pollution incidents, waste incidents, water-quality events, and other environmental emergencies.
- Ensure environmental programs and operations comply with applicable environmental laws, regulations, permits, licenses, approvals, standards, and organizational requirements.
- Monitor developments in environmental legislation, regulatory requirements, government policies, environmental standards, and industry expectations.
- Coordinate with Legal and Compliance teams on environmental regulatory obligations, permits, reporting requirements, enforcement risks, and compliance matters.
- Maintain environmental permits, licenses, approvals, monitoring records, regulatory submissions, inspection documentation, and compliance evidence.
- Prepare or coordinate environmental regulatory reports, submissions, notifications, and responses where applicable.
Ideal Candidate
The successful candidate should have experience in environmental programs, environmental management, sustainability, ESG, environmental consulting, environmental compliance, conservation, natural resources, pollution prevention, resource efficiency, or related fields.
Experience working with corporations, engineering firms, infrastructure organizations, construction companies, manufacturers, utilities, energy organizations, municipalities, environmental consultancies, or government agencies is highly advantageous.
The candidate should demonstrate:
- Strong understanding of environmental management, environmental sustainability, pollution prevention, resource efficiency, conservation, and environmental compliance.
- Proven experience developing, managing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating environmental programs.
- Strong ability to translate environmental priorities into practical programs with measurable objectives and outcomes.
- Experience conducting environmental assessments, audits, monitoring programs, risk assessments, impact assessments, or environmental reviews.
- Strong understanding of environmental regulatory requirements, permits, licenses, standards, and compliance management.
- Experience managing environmental consultants, contractors, laboratories, auditors, technical specialists, or external service providers.
- Strong project and program-management capabilities, including planning, budgeting, risk management, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
- Experience developing environmental KPIs, dashboards, performance reports, compliance trackers, and management presentations.
- Strong analytical and data-management skills with the ability to interpret environmental performance information and technical reports.
- Experience with water management, waste management, resource efficiency, biodiversity, pollution prevention, or environmental restoration is highly advantageous.
- Strong understanding of sustainability, ESG, climate-related environmental risks, and natural-resource management.
- Experience working with government authorities, regulators, municipalities, NGOs, communities, consultants, or industry organizations.
- Strong stakeholder-management, communication, facilitation, negotiation, and influencing skills.
- Strong financial and commercial awareness with the ability to develop environmental business cases and evaluate investment decisions.
- Strong Microsoft Office skills, particularly Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
- Familiarity with environmental management systems, GIS, environmental monitoring, data-analysis, ESG, sustainability, compliance, or project-management platforms.
- Knowledge of recognized environmental management, sustainability, conservation, or environmental reporting standards is highly advantageous.
- Ability to balance environmental objectives with operational requirements, regulatory obligations, financial considerations, project constraints, and stakeholder expectations.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in English; Arabic is highly advantageous for UAE and broader GCC environmental and regulatory environments.
- Ability to work independently in a fully remote and internationally distributed environment.
- High level of integrity, environmental responsibility, technical judgment, accountability, and professional discretion.
- Strong strategic, analytical, program-oriented, risk-aware, stakeholder-focused, and sustainability-driven mindset.